Shell scripting - spaces in variables?

Question

Here's the problem I have with my bash script:

    date1=(`date -d @$startdate`)
    date2=(`date -d @$enddate`)

    touch --date="$date1" /tmp/newerthan
    touch --date="$date2" /tmp/olderthan

Since the words returned by the date -d command contain spaces, the only thing that gets processed by the touch --date="$var" command is the first word (which is "Mon", "Tue", "Wed"... etc), so it doesn't work properly.

How can I work around this problem and be able to get the subsequent lines to process the entire string?

Jonathan Leffler · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-08 00:32:23Z

2

You've used an array assignment in:

date1=(`date -d @$startdate`)

Either use plain backquotes (definitely not the preferred technique, though):

date1=`date -d @$startdate`

Or (much better) use $(...):

date1=$(date -d @$startdate)

Or, at a pinch (there'd have to be a good reason), use this to copy the whole array into the argument to touch:

touch --date="${date1[*]}" /tmp/newerthan

You might want to consider double quotes around @$startdate, too.

answered Feb 8, 2014 at 0:32

Jonathan Leffler

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